Thousandapologies

“This is a story about boy meets girl, but it is not a love story”, a remark at the very beginning of this interesting movie 500 days of summer. And indeed, this quote characterises the entire movie very well, because it tells the story of a woman, Summer, who doesn’t believe true love exists and a man, Tom, who is desperately looking for “the one”. When Tom meets Summer he believes he found that one, and what follows is a description of the 500 days they spent together, seen through Tom’s eyes. A hopeless story, because Tom is desperately trying to make it work, and Summer is doubting whether she’s just looking for the causual flirt, or for something more serious. This story is portrayed especially well; as the movie randomly jumps from day to day, from start to end, to middle, and back again, Tom’s emotions seem to follow this randomness. A little bit like Goethe’s “Himmelhoch jauchzend und zum Tode betrübt”, he goes from utter joy and hope the one day, to complete sadness and despair the other, even onto a point that his job starts suffering from it. Summer, on the other hand, seems not too much affected by their relationship, is mostly lighthearted about it, but also does not seem to have a clue of what she really wants. While this sounds like a heavy theme to deal with, the movie does not overwhelm the viewer with sadness or heavy feelings, and the randomn order of events even seems to result in some distance to the topic and makes it a very interesting movie to watch. Especially, Zooey Deschanel, an actress I love to see and who mostly portrays somewhat odd characters, gives Summer the necessary substance that is needed for this movie. And while the relationship between Tom & Zooey does not work out as expected, the movie ends positively and in a happy mood. In short, if you like arthouse movies, this is certainly a movie you should not miss.

Ok, I admit that although I’m not a teenage girl, I still liked the Twilight Movie a lot. The movie already starts with a catching quote that must have been taken from the book directly, and gathers momentum as it goes. In the beginning, I was still sceptical, thinking for example that Bella’s friends were too damn shallow (they are) and that would they have come at me on my first schoolday I probably would’ve been freaked out by them. While most of the supporting characters stay shallow, the relationship between Edward (a Vampire) and Bella (Human) develops during the film and the tension between them is clearly felt throughout. Most of all, I think the movie was a good mixture of romance, tension and action and is beautifully shot; especially the American scenery is breathtaking. And hey, a movie that has Flightless Bird of Iron & Wine on its soundtrack has to do a lot to lose my favour . Anyway, a good way to spend a Friday evening and the film has made me curious about the books too. One thing I thought quite funny was that both this movie & the True Blood series have Vampires and mind readers in them, and both use the theme of attraction between them, wonder whether that was a coincidence.